Nigeria Institute of Management is celebrating its golden jubilee anniversary. President/Chairperson in Council, Dr. Sally Nkem Bolujoko-Adukwu, spoke with Princewill Ekwujuru on management issues in Nigeria, comparing the pre-independence era to the present and the achievement of the institute so far. Excerpts

Looking back at management from pre-independence era to the present day, what significant changes do you think has taken place, with Nigerian governance in focus?

Managing Nigeria has not been easy and I also wouldn’t   tell you that the managers of Nigeria have managed well since independence.  However, in pre–independence, we saw some best practices in management. The colonial masters managed the nation as an enterprise.

Remember we had no oil then but the colonial masters made sure that the regions were empowered to invest in areas they had comparative advantage, especially   in agriculture. We also didn’t have a lot of manpower capacity but the white men still managed the economy optimally and the society was stable.

That way, bills were paid and institutions were built; schools functioned well, and they developed men and women who took up offices and functions and positions in both the private and public sectors.  Companies like UACN, Lever Brother (now Unilever) developed Africans and also left some values and ethics in management.

In those days you heard of the General Order (GO) of the civil service and it was like an almighty document that everybody obeyed and applied.  People had values and the civil service was effective. However, seven years only after independence, the country was plunged into coups and civil war and we tampered with and politicized the institution of the Civil Service.

We started retrenching Permanent Secretaries; changed the nomenclature. A lot of infiltration of poor and unethical values got into our Civil Service and we began to take unsteady steps towards governance and management of resources. We began to adjust the equation of resource allocation to the disapproval of the people who possess the resources that we depend on as a nation.

The country then began to hold elections that were not properly conducted. Remember that immediately after the colonial masters left, we found that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe could win election in the Western region, but seven years after independence that had changed.

Primordial loyalty and religious sentiments started being dominant in our national affairs. When societal values are eroded, conduct will always be poor and misguided because it is not proceeding from a solid background of principles, rather behaviour proceeds from a background of lack of principle and mediocrity. We couldn’t even conduct good elections for many years. The first good election we ever conducted, the military annulled it.

While I was growing up, Nigeria was industrializing and we were better than Japan at the time. My mother would not buy Japanese textile because the khaki and the UAC textile products manufactured here then were better than the ones from Japan. Today the industries are closingdown.

They are relocating to our neighbouring countries where they have electricity to manufacture.  I do not see what we have done by way of managing the nation that we can write home about. If you ask me, I would say that we have mismanaged the nation but I am happy that the present administration is talking good about  managing the nation.

The Presidet is saying that in four years he will stabilize electricity supply. He also said that agriculture would be revived and people will be empowered to go back to agriculture. So there is hope that transformation will come. We will just pray that people who really love this nation and have passion for her growth will get on board to help the President to achieve his goals, because he is just one man.

It behooves all of us to support him to make Nigeria what we desire it to be.

You talked about Vision, Competence, Knowledge and  courage. How would one acquire these through NIM?

NIM builds capacity. Since the past fifty years all we do is train people to have knowledge in their various professions and be more productive than they would have been without enough information.

As many people improve and perform better in their various sectors due to the various human capital development programmes the Institute offers, the economy keeps growing.

We developed a programme called Top Executive Leadership  Programme in collaboration with many universities across the world with which we have Memorandum of Understanding.

Some of the institutions are Manchester University Business School, UK, Georgetown University Business School, Washington, USA; University of Stellenbosch Business School, Cape Town, South Africa; Sun Yat-zen University, Guangzhou, China; Queen’s University Business School Toronto, Canada, London School of Business and Finance, and, most recently, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).

Under these arrangements, the Institute takes the top executives and decision makers of the nation’s organizations and government outside the shores of the country to share management and leadership experiences with their foreign counterparts.

What have been the challenges in the 50 years of the institute and how you were able to surmount them?

Before I became the president, I was a passionate member of NIM. I came to NIM because I was looking for management information to be able to do my job well in a rural college where I was located and I was then made the head of Administration of a new Federal College of Education, established by Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd.).

My husband advised me to join NIM. As the President, I came in with a vision and purpose to make some definite changes. With the cooperation of the council, we have made a lot of improvements in the areas of service delivery and adding value to our stakeholders. We have also made NIM more visible than we met it.

Our 50th anniversary celebration will come up between the 26th to 28th September 2011at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.  Our lead speaker, the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, will be discussing ‘Governance in the 21st century Nigeria’. Governor Babatunde Fashola  of Lagos State will be speaking on ‘Governance as an Enterprise’.

We also have the Head of Economics Department of Oxford University coming to speak on how Nigeria can be re-positioned in  the global market, while the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice  Kanu Agabi  will equally speak.

These are the caliber of people we have invited to speak in the Annual National Management Conference/50th Anniversary of the Institute. To crown it all, we have a colloquium where five State Governors will lead discussions on corporate governance.

What are those distinguishing factors between Management and Administration?

An administrator basically administers work process, he ensures that rules are followed and that all the paper works are done right. But the manager talks about the resources. The input and output are the concern of the manager. The manager plans and budgets the resources required? How much of manpower will be needed to achieve the goal? The manager organizes work and delegates authority, monitors and evaluates the job done.